


Tempered By Time

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Widowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-01
Updated: 2011-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ellen still hadn't taken off her wedding band the night John Winchester showed his face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tempered By Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is AU only in the sense that John went back to the Roadhouse after Bill Harvelle died. Written for thinlizzy2 in the spn_hetexchange.

If Ellen knew one thing about life, it was that people who said they didn't have any regrets were lying, either to themselves or to everybody else. Or both. Even before John Winchester came back from that hunt without Bill, with just his wallet, his knife and his ring and the traces of smoke stench in his clothes, Ellen had her own list of regrets. It wasn't anything she'd tell anybody, unlike the morose drunks, leaning on her bar and telling her about every place their lives had gone wrong.  
   
She didn't regret telling John to get out before he could halfway tell the story of what had happened to Bill. Despite the way her jaw ached from holding tears inside, her eyes burned, her face hot while the rest of her body went cold. John's mouth had still been moving, but all she could hear was Jo, calling out from her bedroom, "Mom! Mom," disturbed from her sleep by the knock on the door so early in the morning. Ellen couldn't even move her jaw to speak, just growled "Get out. Get out!" until John's face shut down tight and he turned around, walked to her door with heavy footsteps and got out.  
   
She cried for Bill. Cried until she slept, and then woke up with her head throbbing, worked all day then cried and slept and woke again. She put Jo on the bus to school every day, knowing her daddy's knife was tucked down in her book bag and unable to stop her from carrying that with her. Bill's ring sat in a box on the top of his chest of drawers. What used to be his chest of drawers. She hadn't taken off her own wedding band, but she wasn't wearing anybody's ring on a chain around her neck. If she could push the circle of metal right through her skin, through her sternum, deep in to her chest--if she could do that, she would.  
   
It was almost six months later when John showed his face again. He walked in and sat at a table in the back, his thick leather-bound journal open in front of him. She let him be for a while, gave herself time to figure out what she wanted to do about it. She wasn't about to cause a scene, not with a bar full of paying customers trying to mind their own business, and the bastard probably knew that. Then again, she knew he'd leave if she asked.

She didn't ask. Silently cursing herself, she dished up a bowl of chili from the big crock pot back in the bar's sad excuse for a kitchen and put a square of cornbread on top. She balanced her tray out with a thick-bottomed glass and a bottle of Jack and carried it all back to his table. He looked up when she stood in front of him, and the heaviness in the lines around his eyes said he hadn't been sleeping any better than she had. Sympathy for John Winchester tasted bitter in her mouth, and she emptied her tray with three thuds that were louder than they had to be.

"Ellen," he said, that voice of his like something that got dragged under a car for five miles. That voice of his that rumbled straight into her belly whether she wanted it to or not.

"Got work to do." She turned her back to him and walked off, swallowing down the mix of feelings that hung up in her throat. She figured he'd leave, now that he'd done whatever he thought was his duty, but he didn't. He ate his food, down to sopping up the last traces of chili with the cornbread, and he drank, sipping slowly enough that by closing time the bottle was only a few inches lower than it had been when she took it out to him. When the rest of her customers were on the other side of the door, she locked up and grabbed a glass. Her feet ached like hell, and she thought about kicking John out. She needed to check on Jo, make sure she'd put herself to bed, and then take a bath and crawl into her own bed.

Still, she walked back to that table where John Winchester still sat, papers spread out in front of him, yellow highlighting and red underlines adding color to the stark photocopies. When she pulled out a chair and sat down, he pushed the papers together and tucked them into a big, battered envelope, twirled the string around the closure in neat figure eights. She poured a couple fingers of bourbon into her glass and knocked back half of it like a shot. The burn faded into thick warmth that moved out from her throat and stomach like ripples in a puddle.

"What're you doing here?"

John sighed, scrubbed one hand through the thick mess of his hair.

"If you say you were coming to check to make sure the little woman was getting along alright I _will_ kick your ass out of this bar."

John snorted a faint ghost of a laugh. "No, I know you got a handle on things, Ellen." He picked up his glass and took a quick drink. "I just, I don't have a whole lot of--" He paused and opened his mouth like he was trying out which word was right. "--allies these days. Thought maybe I'd see if you're one of the few people who know my name and don't want to shoot me on sight."

"Well, you know, wanting and doing are two separate things."

"True enough." John went quiet, moving his glass a little in his hand and staring, at the motion of the amber liquid inside or at something inside his own head, she didn't know. "Ellen, I want you to know how sorry I am that I couldn't--that Bill--"

Ellen put her glass down hard, startling him out of his stuttered apology. "I don't want to talk about Bill. If we're going to be allies or friends or whatever we can be, that's fine but we're not talking about Bill."

"Okay." John closed his eyes, and when he opened them again she felt a warmth stir in her belly, a longing so long absent it felt almost alien. She looked away, trying to force her mind on to something else, and found herself instead staring at his hands. One was wrapped around his glass, but the other was flat on the table, palm down, long fingers stretching toward her.

It was too much, being alone so long. Alone, surrounded by her grief and her daughter and her work. And now John Winchester looking at her with something that might've been called bedroom eyes if they weren't so heavy with his own grief and guilt. She stood up and walked back to the bar, proud she didn't stumble. She stood with one hand on the waxy wood surface of the bar, feeling the grain of the wood, the scratches and dents under her fingers, and she listened as John's chair scraped against the floor and his footsteps grew near.

His hand around her arm hit like a shock through her body; nobody but Jo had touched her in months. She drew in a trembling breath and opened her eyes to see him close enough to count the new gray hairs in his beard. "John," she whispered.

"Jesus, Ellen, you okay? You need to sit down?"

He was already bending down to look in her face. All she had to do was put a hand on his shoulder, draw him in, and then her lips were on his. He stayed stiff and still for a moment, but then he relaxed, his mouth opening to let her in, his hands touching tentatively at her sides and then pulling her tighter, curving around to the small of her back. His smell surrounded her, leather and bourbon and pine and musk, heady with familiarity, so much like--

Like Bill.

She opened her hands, letting go of the handfuls of flannel she'd been holding on to, and pushed on John's chest, breaking the kiss. Her breath felt heavy in her lungs, and his taste still filled her mouth. He took a big, stumbling step back, his eyes wide and alert with confusion. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't--"

"It's not your fault." She shook her head. "Just--just go on home. Go on home to your boys."

"You sure?" He looked away, rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. "I could stay. If you wanted."

Ellen wasn't sure, and she wanted more than anything to have that smell around her again, strong hands on her body, somebody to talk to at the end of the day. Even if it wasn't every day. "I'm sure." She nodded, stiffening her jaw. "Go on."

He walked back to his table and gathered up his papers and his journal, shrugged into his jacket. He headed toward the door then, and before he walked out into the night he turned back. "You, uh, you take care of yourself."

"You too."

He left then, and a moment later she heard his car start up. The noise of the engine grew and then faded, and he was gone. She could still feel the ghost of his touch on her hips, and she didn't know what she regretted more--pulling him in or sending him away. She locked the door behind him and walked back toward the dark rooms that waited for her.


End file.
